YLOD PS3 Hard Drive

Hey guys. I need help with a little thing that's been bugging me.

So my PS3 YLOD'd and i'm just wondering if i buy a new PS3 slim, then can put in my old hard drive without having to format the hard drive and then back it up. And after that can i restore all the backed up data onto my new PS3's hard drive.

My old PS3 is a 40gb fat model.

tl;dr can i use my old PS3 hard drive on my new PS3

Nope, you won't be able to back up that hard drive that was on the 40GB model since it is tied to that console. You'll need to format it. If you decide to fix your 40GB, you can do a Data Transfer with your new slim model and even saved data that is copy-protected can be transferred as well.